gTLD Madness: Five Years Later and Where Are We Now? T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Panel Debate

NEW YORK – By the time I started visiting domain conferences in person, unfortunately, what I feel was the greatest domain conference of all time, Howard Neu and Rick Schwartz’s T.R.A.F.F.I.C., had seen its last days. I wish it weren’t so. I think the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences were the best respected domain conferences in history; I can only wish that Howard and Rick, for whatever reason, will team up again and bring it back one day, because everything else, in my opinion, is just second best.

Maybe it was just the A.W.E.S.O.M.E. name of the conference;  maybe the record setting premium domain auctions that took place; maybe the veteran entrepreneurial attendees. It was indeed, Something.

The below two-part video is an hour-and-twenty-minute panel discussion with some of the domain industries most experienced people where they debate the new domain name extensions and their different opinions on where the industry additions might lead as well as how long it may take for it to happen.

Five Years Later and Where Are We Now?

The video serious, part one and part two, was filmed five years ago at the 2013 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. From right to left, the panel included Tim Johnson of .kiwi, from New Zealand, Jeffrey Sass of .CLUB Domains, Monte Cahn of Right of the Dot, Frank Schilling of Uniregistry, Rick Schwartz, The Domain King and Lonnie Borck of B52 Media. The panel was moderated by Howard Neu.

gTLD Madness! Team Schilling vs. Team Schwartz, Part I (Updated)

An interesting clip, at around 33:35 minutes in, was Monte Cohn saying:

The point is that this industry is still in its infancy, unlike real estate which is thousands of years old, it’s not mature yet, it’s not even… we’re not even in the first inning yet. That’s the issue.

Well Monte, I think we’re finally in the first inning and if we look at where we are now, five years later from this video, in my opinion, it’s still going to take 50 more years for this new gTLD madness to go mainstream (become generally desirable and competitive), if it ever gets there at all. I’d bet the majority of average non-Internet industry consumers will take about three domain extensions seriously; .com, .net, and .org.

gTLD Madness: Team Schilling vs Team Schwartz, Part II

About 11 minutes in (10:58) Lonnie Borck notes his basic thought-process and instinct when registering and selling his domains:

Frank, when I look in my Enom account and I see, over the years, when I used to go and get the .org and the .net, I used to spend a lot of money going after the .net and the .org, and every time I buy a name now I get offered the .net and the .org, .info.. I don’t even look at them. You know, I got to a point where, how much money can I spend on something that it’s just, that when I go to sell a domain name I’ve never increased the sale by saying I can offer the .net or the .org, if anything they’ll take it for free. So a long time ago I gave up on that; I’m just going to focus on the .com. My money is best spent on that one name. Rather than buy the .org or .net, I think they are great extensions, and if I were developing a name there, I own baby.net, but at the end of the day, I’m not going to spend my money developing baby.net, It’s a great name, but if I am going to do it, it’s got to be Baby.com.

Well said and agreed. I too remember buying up the few dot alternatives that were available along with a .com, but they have never added any real value so I never do this anymore. And here we are five years later and I’m still not recommending to build any business on what seems like a stack of carefully organised standing toothpicks.

Related: Best Live T.R.A.F.F.I.C., Auction: Domain Name Bidding War